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Scorecards and dashboards seem to be everywhere in organizations these days. The concepts are typically associated with automated support for corporate performance management (CPM).2 Nevertheless, CPM and the supporting information and communication technology (ICT) cannot be reduced to these early warning systems. In this paper, we associate CPM and its high expectations with a generic application component representation and we elaborate on some underlying business intelligence (BI) technologies.
1.CPM
The terminology CPM undoubtedly owes much of its popularity to Gartner3, that describes it as follows:
"CPM is an umbrella term that describes the methodologies, metrics, processes and systems used to monitor and manage the business performance of an enterprise," (Buytendijk and Rayner, 2002).
This definition refers to a shift in scope from just registering the corporate performance for accounting purposes to effectively managing a rich and balanced set of organizational performance aspects, ultimately focusing on the continuity of the organization. ICT systems are mentioned on par with, or better, as enablers of adapted management methodologies and models, the adoption of performance measurement techniques, and integrated business process management. It should be clear that the kind of management maturity implied in Gartner's description of CPM requires an equally mature information and technology base.
2. Expectations
CPM clearly raises the bar for organizational management. The mandate for realizing the expectation of improved organizational management is reinforced by a recent set of company scandals (e.g. Enron, WorldCom) and resulting legislation and regulation (e.g. Sarbanes-Oxley, Basel II, Tabaksblatt) attesting to a definite need for more transparency in the way organizations are managed. These are some of the primary expectations set for CPM:
* The use of metrics - "You cannot manage what you cannot measure." This is equally true for the execution of organizational strategy. After the effective formulation of a strategy in clear objectives, the latter are to be translated into critical success factors that are then linked into well chosen performance metrics, so-called key performance indicators (KPI).
* The use of a balanced set of performance metrics - The call for balancing a variety of performance perspectives, fundamental to such frameworks as the Balanced Scorecard (Kaplan and Norton, 2000, 2004) and the Excellence Model of the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM, 2003), emerged in answer...